Thursday, May 19, 2016

Katie
anxiously fiddled with the wire-wrapped tag around her neck as I
guided her through the thick brush and shrubbery that I had faced on
my first visit to the Greenwood, which felt so much longer than only
a month and a half ago. The events of the summer seemed to span a
year or even longer, and it was the kind of summer meant for stories.
I honestly cannot imagine life without Apple Blossom, the Greenwood,
and the Jadeites anymore.

We
paused frequently so that I could help Hannah and Janelle past
low-hanging vines, out of thickets that snagged at their pants and
shoes, and over branches resting in our way. At one point, Janelle
fell into my back, and I thought that she had tripped over another
branch. When I whirled around to catch her, her eyes were wide with
terror and she said, “I just saw this huge black spider, with long,
spindly legs. Which spider was that, Aidyn?” She spoke rapidly, as
she was apt to do when something scared her. I had warned them about
the spiders, but that made no difference to Janelle. Nothing in this
world would make Janelle okay with spiders. “I don't know every
spider in the Greenwood, Janelle,” I said, patting her on the
shoulder, “but the really big ones are usually Elder Guardians. In
that case, you'd better be on your best behavior, kid. The guardians
command respect, especially the elders.”

“Why
do they have to be spiders?”
lamented Janelle, clearly troubled over the idea of having to show
respect to a spider.

“Because
most people react to them the same way that you do,” I said with a
cheeky grin.

“This
is the part with the spiders,” Katie warned as we neared the
collection of webs that served as the gates to the Greenwood.
“Janelle, you'd better get behind me and Hannah...oh! There's that
really big one that Aidyn calls the Grand Elder Guardian. My
goodness, it startled me!”

“He
startled
you,” I corrected her. I peered through the threads of the web,
which was lowered as I had expected it to be. Apple Blossom had
requested for the guardians to allow my friends through, stating that
any friends of mine were also friends of hers, but even requests from
the princess had their limits—one human was more than enough. “You
all wait right here,” I told my friends. “Don't touch anything,
don't move, and if you see a spider, for heaven's sake, just leave it
alone!”

“I see a great many spiders,”
Janelle remarked anxiously. I got down on my hands and knees and
crawled under the Grand Elder Guardian's web. “I'm sorry about
this,” I said, nodding to the spider once I got on my feet. “I'm
just looking for the princess, that's all. Apple Blossom! We're here,
Apple Blossom! We're all waiting for you!”

“You're
crazy, Aidyn!” said Hannah, but I ignored her and continued to call
out. Soon I was answered by the sound of swift little footsteps
making their way towards us. Apple Blossom emerged, her grass-green
ponytails flying out wildly behind her. I heard an audible gasp from
both Hannah and Janelle as they laid eyes on her for the first time.
She was so very human, and yet distinctly not.
She
flashed her iconic sunshine smile at the three of them, and then,
bouncing on her toes, she cried, “Katie! Hello, Katie! Welcome
back! I missed you!”

“You did?” Katie asked in
astonishment.

“I did!” Apple Blossom chirped.
“I really, really did! And oh, these must be your
friends...um...oh, I've forgotten their names!” She turned to me,
plainly embarrassed to have forgotten, and asked, “What are their
names again?”

“Hannah and Janelle,” I told
her, knowing they were too stunned to answer for themselves. They
looked less like they had seen an elf and more like they had seen a
ghost; they were rigid, with wide eyes and tight lips, and Janelle
was even paler than she had been when she found the spiders. “Come
on, you two,” I taunted them, “you aren't actually scared of this
little fox, are you?”

“Well...no,” Hannah choked out,
“not scared, just...” But she wouldn't say anything beyond that.
Slowly, as if in a dream, she knelt down to Apple Blossom's level.
“Stay on your side of the web,” I warned her as Apple Blossom
scampered over to her. “I'm real,” she assured them, extending a
hand that held a rounded, polished deep green jade stone—a tag.
Hannah accepted the tag and turned it over in her hand, before
holding it out in front of her eyes as if to make sure it was
actually there. “What...what is this for?” she stammered.

“If any humans come around here,”
Apple Blossom explained, “my mother, the queen, likes to make sure
to keep track of them. So she has them tagged, and then we know just
how many humans have come by, and we know to keep an eye out for
them. If any of them come back, bearing a tag, then we know that they
have been here before. So far, eight humans—including the two of
you—have come around the Greenwood, but Aidyn was the first to ever
make it past the Grand Elder Guardian upon her return.”

“Thanks to you,” I told her.

“And that would make you the
second, third, and fourth!” she said merrily, passing Janelle her
tag. “They say 'seven' and 'eight' in tree elven,” she told them
when they squinted their eyes at the strange carved lines.

“Where are the taggers?” I
asked, though I was glad that they hadn't shown up. “I called them
off,” Apple Blossom answered. “I wanted to see your friends
before anybody else got a chance to!”

Hannah and Janelle didn't know what
to say. They looked at the tags, at eachother, at me, at Apple
Blossom, and at the massive web that kept them from taking a step
further. Finally Katie asked, “May we go in?”

“You may,” Apple Blossom said
politely, “but I promised that I wouldn't bring you past the bridge
today. But that's just fine, you'll get to see my village and my
castle some other time.” She took a few steps forward, so that she
stood directly under the arrangement of webs spun by the guardians.
“Oh, guardians of the Greenwood,” she said with the reverence of
a priest, “I, the Princess of the Greenwood, would appreciate it
very much if you would allow my new friends to come into our lands. I
know that they are human, and that it is not our custom to allow
humans into the Greenwood, but I also know that not every human means
any harm—in fact, I have yet to meet any that do. These are friends
of Aidyn, and you know her well. I know that Aidyn would never bring
anyone in who meant to cause trouble or harm to the Greenwood. As the
princess, it is my duty to protect the Greenwood and its people, so
if I thought these humans meant any harm, I would not be asking for
them to be allowed in at all. Do you trust me? Do you trust Aidyn?”

That girl never, ever ceases to
amaze me. She can go from silly little girl to solemn future queen to
reverent monk and back again with zero effort. I looked at my
friends, who were all as stunned as I was to see a ten-year-old girl
carry on like that. But when the Grand Elder Guardian actually began
to disassemble his web, adjusting and twisting and pulling at the
threads in order to comply with the princess' request, it was like
watching something out of a movie, only it was happening right before
our eyes! Thread by thread, the web fell away and left a
reasonably-sized space for my friends to duck their heads through.
The other guardians followed, dismantling their own webs to begin
reassembling them in higher positions on the branches. Janelle
squeaked and hid her face in her hands, and I pitied her. She cared
more about the movement of spindly spider legs than the real magic
that was unfolding right in front of her.

“Come
on in,” Apple Blossom said cordially, as the Grand Elder Guardian
worked at reassembling his web. I took Hannah and Janelle by the hand
and the five of us started off together. “But how did you do it?”
Hannah asked breathlessly. “How
did
you do it? They...spiders don't just do
that!”

“They do if their princess asks
them to,” Apple Blossom said with a bit of a smug grin. I had a
feeling there was just a little bit more to it than that; surely, the
jade stone around her neck had something to do with it.

On the way to the bridge, the haze
that my friends had fallen into faded away. They were full of the
same kind of questions that I had asked on my first day: “Are you
really an elf? “What is a Jadeite?” “What is the Greenwood?”
“What are the jade essences?” “What happened to the humans that
came by before Aidyn?” “Why don't your people like humans?”
Apple Blossom answered each one with the patience of a proper
princess, but this time around she had answers that she had not had
for me—such as the Jadeites' connection to humans, and how it
contributed to her own inherent humanity. A couple of times, the
girls had to pause to take it all in. “I feel like I'm in a fairy
tale,” Hannah said at one point, and Janelle asked, “Are you sure
I'm not dreaming?”

“Oh, no,” Apple Blossom had told
them, “I'm very real.”

At the bridge, we found that Apple
Blossom had set up a picnic for us, and that a row of spears lined up
as a makeshift gate along the Bell's Rush dared us to go any further
into the Greenwood. It felt so wrong to see the Greenwood blocked off
like that, and I couldn't help but feel resentful towards my friends
for inadvertently causing it. Apple Blossom, however, carried on as
if the spears were just another part of the scenery. She motioned for
us to take our seats. I squealed when I spotted the bowl of deep red
cranberry pudding sitting in the middle of the blanket. “Oh my
goodness, Apple Blossom! Did Raindrop's mother make this again?”

“She did,” Apple Blossom said,
beaming. “I asked her for it.” I helped myself to two big
spoonfuls and passed the rest around to my friends, who eyed it
skeptically. “You have got to try this pudding!” I told them.
“You will never have tasted anything better in your life!” They
inspected the rest of the food: venison, pork loaf, fresh berries,
buttery yellow peaches, and the light, fluffy bread that the Jadeites
call “silk bread.” I wished that I had thought to bring grapes.
These were foods that I had eaten and learned to appreciate at our
lunches and dinners throughout the summer, but of course my friends
chose the familiar fruits and dainty cuts of the pork. I caught
Hannah prodding at her pudding like a skeptical three-year-old, and I
sighed.

“Do you have any more questions
for me?” Apple Blossom asked. “Aidyn and Katie had a lot of
questions when we met.”

“Well...” Janelle looked up at
the leaves on the trees as if searching for a question up there.
Finally, she said, “Why did you want us to come here?”

Apple Blossom gave her a solemn
smile. “I've told you that the first Jadeite was the child of a
human and a tree elf,” she said in her most queenly way. “That
means that there has been an alliance before, and so there can be one
again.”

Apple Blossom had brought a few of
her toys with her—a little wooden ball, three long, colorful
painted sticks, and four shiny wooden rings—and after we ate she
coaxed us into playing a few games. Katie and I were perfectly
willing to play catch, roll rings down the little bumps and slopes
along the Bell's Rush, kick off our shoes to wade, and chase
eachother through the woods like squirrels. But Hannah and Janelle
had returned to their original state of hazy bewilderment. They kept
to themselves, wandering around and regarding everything with the
confusion of Alice after a tumble down the rabbit hole. Apple Blossom
scurried over to them and asked, “Don't you want to play with us?”

“Not right now,” Hannah replied
somberly.

“Maybe later on,” Janelle tacked
on.

“Just give them a few moments,
Apple Blossom,” I said in response to her disappointment. “You
know that this is very new to them.”

But it took more than just a few
moments. When Apple Blossom realized that they weren't going to open
up anytime today, she took a seat between the two of them and took
their hands. “I'm sorry you don't want to play with us,” she said
in a voice that would have melted the heart of anybody who had one.
“What would you like to do, then?”

“I'd like to know, once and for
all, if this is real or if this is all just a dream or an elaborate
prank,” Janelle said. I could have slapped her! She had watched
spiders disassemble and reassemble their webs at the command of a
little girl, for heaven's sake! How much more proof did she need? If
Apple Blossom hadn't been right there, I would've gone off on her.
But then an idea struck me. “Hey, Apple Blossom,” I said, “why
don't you show them some of your magic?”

“Oh, yes!” Katie piped up. “I'd
like to see some magic!” I grinned at Hannah and Janelle, whose
faces still reminded me of two stupid does who had been wandering
around on the highway for too long. “Go ahead, Apple Blossom,” I
coaxed her.

“What should I do?” she asked,
looking at Katie and I for approval.

“Hmm...” I tapped my finger
against my chin in thought. Any sort of magic would be enough to blow
their minds, so I settled for something simple. I broke off a few
boughs of a nearby shrub of inkberry and handed them to her. “Make
these change colors,” I said, “like you did to those cranberry
greens down at the bog! Can you do that?”

“I can!” Apple Blossom said
merrily. Immediately, she began sorting the boughs aside, mentally
deeming certain ones as the most worthy of color-changing. She
gathered a small handful and ran her fingers over them in the same
way she had done for the cranberry greens. It was such simple magic
with no real purpose behind it other than amusement, and yet it was
enough to have my friends completely captivated. Katie watched with
her mouth wide open and eyes like an owl's, and Hannah and Janelle's
eyes widened as each leaf turned from forest green to pink, gold,
red, blue, or purple in the girl's fingers. Apple Blossom was
enjoying herself and didn't seem to notice just how much she had
amazed her audience. She smiled contentedly as she worked each leaf,
and when she finished she began bending them into colorful crowns.

I turned to my friends and flashed
them my smuggest grin. “How real is it now?” I asked.

After a few moments, Janelle
answered breathlessly, “It...it is real. And it's magic!”

About Me

I'm Star Nova, and I like to tell stories. This blog used to be more topical, but then just became a place where I could easily hold my stories. I have several short stories and two big works in progress, as well as some old crap and some pending revisions OF some old crap.
I write in order to share how I see the world, from my own perspective. If you're here, you're probably here from Tumblr or Twitter. I hope you like my stories. And if you don't, I hope you at least read them before you decide that. (: